Georgia election official: We've 'crossed a tipping point' where many Republicans' distrust of system will suppress vote
President Trump’s efforts to undermine the results of the November election in Georgia will “absolutely” hurt Republicans in two U.S. Senate runoff races there, an election official in the state said Monday. “We’ve crossed a tipping point where ... there may be some Republicans who don’t trust the outcomes of the system at all, and say, ‘Why bother to vote,’” Gabriel Sterling, Georgia’s voting system implementation manager, told Yahoo News.
Video transcript
GABRIEL STERLING: The undermining of the system, whether it be by Stacey Abrams two years ago or by Donald Trump's team today, without evidence, we can't buy into it. There has to be evidence.
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Many Republicans are at a point now where they don't trust the outcome of the system, which is never a good thing if you're one of those two Republican senators or Republican PSC member running right now. And then maybe you've got people like Lin Wood out there saying if the senators don't do more, I'm not going to vote in the Senate elections if they're not going to give the president more. So I think at this point, we've kind of crossed a tipping point where they're going to be looking at issues where there are going to be some Republicans who don't trust the outcomes of the system at all and why bother to vote, which, of course, makes zero sense, because if you don't vote at all that increases the likelihood of the person who you don't want to win winning.
This is the most secure election we've seen in Georgia probably in 20 years because we have the paper ballot. We have the voter artifact now for every person that we haven't had for a very long time. So I'm hoping that through our transparency, through our continuing to answer every question, through our work with the counties, and through continuing to be as open and straightforward as we can that this system is fair, legal, and is protecting every person's vote, regardless of party, regardless of zip code, that their votes will count.
Now, am I concerned that it's going to end up suppressing the vote, to a degree? Absolutely. And we're going to fight every day to make sure people understand that this was a fair vote. The system does its job. The people involved in the system are honest who are doing their jobs. Now, whether you're on the left or the right, anytime you end up questioning the fundamental fairness without any real evidence of there being an issue, you're undermining the confidence of your voters and everybody else.
They all buy into each other. And like I said before, I think if the outcome in this state had been 12,000 votes the other way, everybody who's saying let them follow the law, the system worked, the outcome is correct, and everybody who's saying this was stolen, we feel cheated because of problems and issues, those roles would have reversed. And that's the reality we live in now, which is not a good reality for any of us in any state.
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